Skate & Surf Festival made its return this spring after John D, the founder of The Bamboozle Festival, announced that Bamboozle wouldn’t be making a return in 2013. When the details about Skate & Surf were announced, the main attraction would be Fall Out Boy headlining the festival after their four year hiatus. Along with Fall Out Boy, some other bands played at the smaller stages who have been nothing short of phenomenal.
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The official blog for 90.9 FM WCDB Albany
((SHOW REVIEW)) THE BABIES, Party Boat, & Birthdays at Valentine’s 5/3/13
It was one of the first days of spring — white flowers were blooming hard all over Albany and people were driving by with open windows spilling music on to the streets. At the time of this writing, Albany Medical Center has not taken over this block where Valentine’s stands and hopefully if you are reading this in the future, it has not done so!
It is Friday night, May 3rd, with locals Birthdays and Party Boat opening for THE BABIES. We were all really excited to see The Babies play live – A lot of the rock DJs have played the hell out of Our House on the Hill since it was released in November 2012. One concert-goer proclaimed, “MY HEART IS A JITTERY BUTTERFLY” while we waited for them to start and I forced a “Kodak Moment”:
THE BABIES – I had so much fun during their set – They had lots of energy and played all the hits! Their live show translated well from their studio albums — Seeing them live made me love their songs even more because the instruments sounded bolder all around and it really did it for me. I hope one day I can see them play a basement show. There were a lot of dancers in the audience which made the set even more fun.
They had Our House on the Hill on record, cassette, and CD, their self titled CD, Moonlight Mile/Places 7” (review below), T-Shirt, and an AWESOME TOTE BAG (A++++++)
Daft Punk – Random Access Memories
“In a world dominated by Avicci and David Guetta, Daft Punk steps in once again to show us what we need to be hearing”
NOTE: This album releases worldwide May 20th.
Turn it off. Turn off the mindset of all the current trends, the music you currently like, and be ready to listen to something completely different. It’s electronic too, but nothing like you’ve heard in the past. I’m not saying it’s a masterpiece and superior to everything else, but rather blows you away in how radical the sound is. I truly believe a new standard has been created in the music space, and Daft Punk has once again innovated the world of electronic music.
Essential Albums: The Magnetic Fields- 69 Love Songs
Quick Band Bio: The Magnetic Fields are a Boston band that formed in 1988 and released their first album Distant Plastic Trees in 1991. They became known for their use of unusual instrumentation in pop songs, frequent inclusion of synthesizers, and Stephen Merritt’s songwriting style (short and clever). 69 Love Songs was the sixth album released by the group, and the one that served as their breakthrough as the triple album excels despite asking it’s audience to give them your patience for the nearly three hours of music. A three hour concept album sounds a bit scary, but this concept doesn’t end up limiting the band nearly as much as you’d expect given the title, in fact Merritt clarified upon the release that “69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It’s an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love”.
DJ Survey: What’s Your Favorite Summer Album
We’re in Finals week here at SUNY Albany, and with summer approaching we decided to check in with our DJs before they bolted to see which albums they think they’ll be playing during the upcoming months!
DJ Milky [Alt-Rock]- “DJ Milky’s Music Hour for Dumb Babies” Monday 4am-6am
I generally like listening to jangly stuff like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Anything that would be a good soundtrack to riding a bike in shorts while drinking a slurpee.
Metal Tony [Metal]- “The Metal F’n Show” Saturday 10pm-midnight
For me, it would have to be For the Sake of Revenge by Sonata Arctica. The music is very upbeat, plus the live aspect of it reminds me that summer season is concert season.
DJ HEAT [Alt-Rock]- “Let the Good Times Roll” Monday 6pm-8pm
Jay Reatard Blood Visions: CRANK THAT with the windows down and you will feel like you drank 10 cups of coffee in a good way (R.I.P. Jay Reatard)
Bruce Springsteen – All 3 parts of the Live at Passaic bootleg from 1978. Also… I think “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen is the quintessential summer song
Sleater-Kinney All Hands on the Bad One
1 CURRENT song that is a definitely summer song is “Quotidian Beast” by Phosphorescent
Creative Writing at WCDB
This segment is going to give our DJs a chance to post their creative writing on the blog. The only qualifiers for submissions were that the work had to be under 250 words and could be done in any format. Submissions were assumed anonymous unless they attached their name to the work. The first installment of this features four works by our DJs, read them after the jump!
Essential Albums: The Flaming Lips- Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Quick Band Bio: The Flaming Lips are a psychedelic rock and pop group from Oklahoma. When the group originally formed in 1983 it consisted of Wayne Coyne, Michael Ivins and Mark Coyne, the original lead vocalist before he left the band in 1985. This left Wayne, Mark’s brother and the lead guitarist, to assume lead vocals as well. This is where the Flaming Lips of today truly started: The band began to form their reputation through the combination of a breakthrough single in “She Don’t Use Jelly”, great albums and the bizarre antics that the band performs. Within the last 2 years, the Flaming Lips have a role in the following news stories: They’ve released music in an anatomically correct chocolate heart, vinyls containing samples of the artists’ blood, a USB in gummy shaped like a fetus and a 24 hour long song shipped in real human skulls; while also mistakenly taking a grenade into an airport, posting a music video of Erykah Badu’s sister naked which lead to a feud between the artists as permission wasn’t received, and setting the Guinness World Record for most concerts played in different cities in a 24 hour period. These are good examples of why the Flaming Lips are absolutely insane, and Wayne Coyne is the most interesting musician today who’s still releasing music.
These stories could scare someone away from listening to The Flaming Lips, but the truth is that the band actually makes very accessible music. A lot of thought goes into their releases, and they deserve a lot of credit for creating albums around completely developed ideas. Oddly though, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots isn’t the best example to use for this as Coyne has stated that this album really just seemed to come together as a story after they started creating the songs. How they got tied together into the story is still wildly entertaining though, as Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots presents the listener with a Japanese girl who is the only hope of saving her people by defeating the evil robots that have arrived, and this ends up being a terrific setting for the Flaming Lips’ bouncing guitars and philosophical lyrics to capture your imagination.
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WCDB Tabling Today: Looking for Summer DJs!
Everyone keep an eye out for us today, we’ll be tabling outside the campus center at the small fountain from 10 AM-4 PM trying to find some future DJs! If you’re into Alternative Music within any genre or would like to get involved with our Sports or News department, stop by and introduce yourself to our current DJs.
This is especially true if you’re going to be in the Albany area over the summer and have interest in hosting your own radio show, because we’re determined to get good programming out to our listeners during summer break!
Two LPs//One EP (No split this month)
It’s Yazen again, giving an update on some quality music dropping in May. This month is going to be a crazy month for Pop Punk, and I’m going to be discussing some new releases from The Wonder Years, Man Overboard, and Misser.
LP 1: The Wonder Years – The Greatest Generation. (Hopeless Records.)
The Wonder Years have been a massive name in Pop Punk since they released “The Upsides,” and their new album is proving to be their best. The band claims it’s the third part of a trilogy about growing up, and they’ve been building hype for it with a 24 hour record release tour, in-store performances, and they even auctioned a pre-order bundle and donated the proceeds to The One Fund – Boston. The three singles that have been released so far show signs of progression, with more vocal harmonies from Matt Brasch and Josh Martin, and some of Dan Campbell’s most personal lyrics.
Essential Albums: Daniel Johnston- 1990
Quick Artist Bio: Daniel Johnston is one of the premier singer-songwriters you can listen to, but this comes at the expense of being one of the most unstable artists to have ever released music. Johnston’s music isn’t particularly complex, it’s usually either unaccompanied or with an acoustic guitar he can’t play very well, but he creates a lo-fi folk sound that’s helped define the indie folk genre. This sound can be heard especially in his homemade cassette releases that he used to begin his career in the Austin music scene. A defining aspect of Johnston’s life has been his struggle with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia which have lead him into mental institutions and arrests multiple times while he avoided medication for live shows or song writing.
The recording sessions for 1990 actually took place in 1988 and were never able to be completed fully because of Johnston’s mental problems and instability in New York City. The album had to be pieced together by adding in home and live recordings to create a finished product capable of being released while friends tried to force Johnston to return home for his own sake. Once this did happen, Johnston immediately broke into the house of an elderly woman who jumped out of a second story window to escape and broke both of her ankles upon hitting the ground. Johnston would later claim that he was possessed by demons during the incident, and two years later his mental instability would show itself again when he removed the key from a two-person plane his father was piloting mid flight and threw it out the window. This time Johnston believed that he was Casper the friendly ghost, a thought that occurred for him often during his manic episodes, and a thought that nearly killed them. Fortunately Johnston’s father was trained for emergency scenarios like this and was able to successfully crash the plane in a field of trees immediately below them in a way that neither was injured badly, but Johnston was readmitted to a mental hospital because of it. Johnston is a cursed man who’s struggles are sad and worrisome, but the songs that he creates are remarkably relatable for what he’s been through, and 1990 is a collection of some of his finest work from an impressive musical career.
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